Racism Review

President Obama: “We need to do some soul-searching”

President Obama’s historic remarks yesterday about Trayvon Martin and the Zimmerman verdit were striking for their clarity on on race and racism. Addressing how the Zimmerman case unfolded, President Obama said:

“If a white male teen would have been involved in this scenario, both the outcome and the aftermath would have been different.”

All of this, of course, set the right-wing media machine into overdrive, calling President Obama’s remarks “race-baiting,” a claim that boggles the mind for a second term president, but no matter. You can read the full transcript of his remarks, and we’ll have more to say about these in the coming days on this blog, but the place I wanted to start with is near the end:

“I think it’s going to be important for all of us to do some soul-searching.”

Yet, when it comes to soul-searching memoirs by white people about race and racism in the U.S. there are just many fewer of these and they are mostly disappointing endeavors. There is Clara Silverstein’s White Girl: A Story of School Desegregation, in which the author uses her experience to undermine the entire project of integrating schools.

Debra Dickerson asks, “why are white people suddenly so interested in race?” and goes on to point out, memoirs such as DeWolf, Ball, and Carr’s:

“do what America never will; participate in all the truth and reconciliation we’re ever going to have—piecemeal, caveated, hazy, [and] statute of limitations-expired…”

Dickerson is right. There’s been no truth and reconciliation process in the U.S. for the centuries of chattel slavery, rape, Jim Crow segregation, lynching, discrimination, and ongoing extra-judicial killings. Beyond these few titles, there’s a paucity of writing by whites who are doing any of the really difficult “soul-searching” about the past or the present in the U.S.

I recently watched the documentary, “Hitler’s Children,” which chronicles the stories of descendants of the most powerful figures in the Nazi regime. One of the people featured is Niklas Frank, who wrote a book about his father, Hans Frank, convicted and hanged at Nuremberg as a Nazi war criminal. Frank’s book Der Vater: Eine Abrechnung(“The Father: A Settling of Accounts”), was published in English as In the Shadow of the Reich, is a scathing account of his father’s participation in the Third Reich’s genocide of six million. The interviews with Frank in the film capture his unflinching courage at looking at the legacy of his father. In one of the most touching scenes, Frank has a conversation with this daughter and asks her if she ever thinks about Hans Frank, her grandfather the Nazi war criminal. She responds that she rarely thinks of him because, she says to her father, “You were a fortress against that. Because of what you wrote, I felt like I was protected somehow.” It’s moving encounter that reveals so much about why this sort of soul-searching is necessary.

Yet, this sort of grappling with hard truths is mostly missing in the U.S. context. It’s part of what prompted me to start work on my own memoir.

My Memoir

In my experience doing research for my first book about white supremacist groups, I did some of my own personal, familial history and soul-searching. I learned that my paternal grandfather, in addition to being the mayor of the small town of Eden, Texas, had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. This was especially startling given the family mythology I was raised with which was that we were, on my father’s side, descendants of Native Americans (tribe unknown).

(My father, Jim Tom Harper, with his parents, George and Bernice.)

If your ancestors, like mine, were actively involved in making sure that systems of inequality were entrenched and continued in perpetuity, then going back and looking at – not to mention looking for – that history is can be a painful exercise in shame. The tendency for most people when confronted with that kind of history is to dismiss, deny, ignore. My tendency, for whatever reason, is to poke, prod and reveal.

Uncovering the history of racial privilege can affect the present. When I learned the facts of my grandfather’s participation in the KKK, I used this newly discovered fact about my grandfather’s involvement to situate my own work about white supremacy in the preface to White Lies. As a result of this discovery, I also changed my given name to Jessie Daniels. For me, seeing that my last name (Harper) was the same as my grandfather who was in the Klan, seemed wrong. And it seemed especially wrong to be on a book in which I was critical of white supremacy.

When my father read a draft of that piece, he threatened to stop publication of the book and had me briefly committed to a psychiatric ward. After the seventy-two hour hold, my older brother came to the hearing considering my release, testified that I was mostly sane, and got me sprung. That first book was published, I moved far away and lived under my new name, teaching about racial privilege to college students on the East Coast. My father died two years after the book was published, and we never spoke again. The last time I saw him was at a hearing where he wanted to have me locked up for telling the truth about our family. I think my father’s reaction was extreme, but in many ways, it was not. As I learned, there are powerful cultural and social forces – like fathers and judges and hospitals – that can align to keep family secrets about racism.

It’s important that we do the kind of “soul-searching” that President Obama called for. Whites in the U.S. in general are incredibly naïve about race and about their own complicity in creating and maintaining this system of racial inequality. My naïvete was in not realizing how profoundly upset my father would be about these revelations. Even with my difficult experience with my father, I still think it’s important for whites to go back and look at what their genealogy of racial privilege is as painful and unpopular as that might be.

Ask your grandparents about the G.I. Bill – did your grandfather go to school on that government subsidy? Did he buy a house with help from the G.I. Bill? Were there “deed restrictions” on the house you grew up in? Ask about the college admissions policies when your parents or grandparents went to school – who was excluded? Ask about the employment policies – who was hired — who was not? How many whites know the answers to these questions going back even a generation? Two generations? Three generations? Very few.

My point here is not to remain in the shallow eddy of thinking about race that is “white guilt,” but rather to use this sort of “soul-searching” to move the conversation forward in some small way. Only then can we begin to step up and take responsibility for what our ancestors have wrought and more importantly, take some responsibility for dismantling the system of inequality they put in place and from which we still benefit.

~ Jessie Daniels, PhD, is a CUNY Professor, and is writing a memoir called, No Daughter of Mine.

Comments

Soul-searching indeed.
I was moving through a grocery store checkout line yesterday, after having picked up my son, (I get my boys every other week for 50% custody, and have to learn what their current issues are for that week) and as we approached the cashier, the white woman in front of us finished her animated discussion with the white man teller, with “well they both had a right to be there and it is so tragic that Zimmerman had to stand his ground” to which the teller replied “true, if people can only see that it is not about race but rights” and so on.
My son asked me what they were talking about, and as I gave him a briefing especially with Trayvon as a true victim, the teller interjected with “well, manslaughter is a bit murky and could not be proved when someone is defending himself.”
I tell this because my son became confused as to who was defending himself, so we discussed it at length later, and he found it amazing that an armed man confronted another unarmed teenager and shot him dead and called it self-defense.
And as the protests grow, many “whites” are getting angrier, wanting acceptance of the jury decision, and saying it is not about race, which is apparently what the judge said too, white woman judge with white women jury and white lawyers agreeing it is not about race, but not being able to tell who the “they” or “f…ing punks” were if not about race.
Victimhood along racial lines is much like a rape victim now, before some laws addressed this, in that we question what the clothing was, what they were doing, did they resist, what is their past about, and so on it goes.
This is why we need this site Racism Review, and why we need classes such as the summer capstone Race and Racism I am going to teach next month, using Joe’s book and some others, and once again I don’t need to use past articles and events because current ones demonstrate how deeply imbued with racism American society is,
so thank you Jessie and Joe.

Just wanted to comment that this is the most self-revealing post you ever wrote Jessie. I fully realize the sacrifices you made to become the anti-racist soldier that you are. Just wanted to tell you I think you’re very brave. Everyone should be like you. But most people aren’t strong enough. And yes, we should all do more soul searching about how we see our fellow humans, of whatever race.

@Jim Fenton – From what I understand, the prosecution asked to many questions without giving answers. That’s what the lawyer commentators on MSNBC explain. The irony is that of all the questions they asked, the one they should’ve asked but didn’t was, “Didn’t Trayvon have the right to defend himself? Didn’t he have the right to be afraid?”

Of course, B-37 — personally, I’m expecting her memoir to drop in about 10 years, 5 if they need the money — confirmed for me that the jury was filled with their own biases. It seems as though some A TIME TO KILL, “Now imagine the 17-year-old is white,” summating (?) was in order.

——————————————–

Soul searching. Soul searching. Soul. Searching.

Let’s be clear. Not everybody needs to do any “soul searching.” Notwithstanding the large number of African Americans who don’t believe persistent racial disparities are due to persistent racial discrimination . . . not everybody needs to do any soul searching.

side-note
Anybody else notice the absence of Latino/as speaking out in support of, as B-37 knew him, George? I haven’t heard a lot of noise from Latin groups claiming Zimmerman as their own. Granted, it’s rare that their voices are in mainstream/white media. The one guy I saw on MSNBC was clearly not on Zimmerman’s side. I read a piece by Isa Hopkins, half-Cuban, explaining how WASP whites embrace Latino/a whites when it’s convenient, like now, but readily toss them aside when necessary, re: immigration. Anybody know of any Latin voices claiming that Jorge couldn’t possibly be racist (against blacks) because he’s (half) (white-)Hispanic?

Back to soul-searching.

I think it was patently Obama-like to include every American in his request for soul-searching. But this ain’t “soul” music or “soul” food. You don’t have to dance or admit you like watermelon. So let’s take the sugar out and give you the medicine unadulterated:

white America, y’all need to get y’all’s ish together.

But, I will attempt to offer a bit of encouragement/advice.

I’m pretty sure I’ve shared here my finding out I have Irish ancestry via the rape of my black great-great-grandmother. For all the history I know and have read, and even knowing there’s probably white ancestry on my mother’s side, it’s was an odd sensation to realize not that a great-grandmother was raped, but that a great-grandfather was a racist, white rapist and that I am the product of his crime. (Like a living proceed from criminal activity or something. Eerie.)

So I can empathize with the difficulty in accepting one’s heritage. But you know what? I’m not him. I’m not a racist, white rapist. Sure, it’s probably his fault my hair comes in patches of different textures, and yes, I’m a woman, but I’m not him. And, I’m not responsible for his rape. Even if I were a descendant from his legitimate white children, I still wouldn’t be responsible for his rape. No more than it’s Jessie’s fault her grandfather was a Klan member. I’d be responsible for making sure his other descendants got their proper share of inheritance (He owned the county mercantile.), but that’s about it.

And that’s not even the end of my families’ secrets. Suffice it to say I’m not marrying anybody, regardless of race, born in the mid-Atlantic without a DNA test!

Does that help, white people? Yes, it feels awful to learn our ancestors weren’t saints, but we’re not them. You’re not them. You actually don’t own slaves, (not all of you, anyway). Okay? And you’re not responsible for their sins.

Of course, you are on the hook for trillions in unpaid wealth/accumulation and for your own sins, like being afraid of a 17-year-old. (An unarmed 17-year-old? Seriously.) You’re right that admitting to unjust benefits can feel unfair, operative words being “unjust” and “feel.” I’ve got advice for that, too, if you want! But I hope this helps ease the pain of your soul searching, emphasis on “your” and “soul searching.”

Let me help you get the ball rolling: it was raining and at night. If not a sweatshirt or a coat with a hood, what exactly should Trayvon have been wearing?

soul searching was ineptly tried in Pres. Clinton’s Initiative on Race with John Hope Franklin. sadly nothing much came of that nearly 2 year effort. the obdurate walls of racism are what Joe has spent his career chronicling and yet the current President had to offer a basic lecture on the construction of race – as if nothing happened in American sociology in 70 years.

Indeed, John. Well put. We have tried it numerous times, the best being the LBJ era Commission that named ‘white racism’ as the central problem, and all politicians including LBJ ran away from it….. That seems to be the bedrock of white resistance. That collective ignoring and forgetting. “Collective memory” as a concept has been developed by Halbwachs, and we need similar work on how this collective forgetting and denial in regard to our racist history operates too.

Jessie, thanks for speaking some of the hard truths of your family history. I share your commitment to unearthing and working with one’s own story. In developing my dissertation and book, Constructing Solidarity (Palgrave MacMillan 2012), I researched my family’s history in South Texas, finding our participation in the Anglo land grab of the 1920s from Mexican and Mexican-American landowners. It was important to know as much as I could in order to work ethically with Latin American and Latin@ liberation theologies in writing a white-critical theology. Unfortunately, no publisher was interested in that part of the story, but it was still important to me to have written it into my dissertation, and for all of my work to be informed by it.

You are right; we have to know our history to begin to work against its ill effects.